The United States delivered a draft proposal for an Israel-Hezbollah truce to Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Thursday.
U.S. Ambassador to Beirut Lisa Johnson met with Berri, a Hezbollah ally, to submit Washington’s first written proposal in several weeks, according to two senior Lebanese sources cited by Reuters.
“It is a draft to get observations from the Lebanese side,” one of the sources told the news agency.
Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer discussed the proposal with U.S. President-elect Trump during a visit to his Florida estate on Sunday, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
The discussions at Mar-a-Lago centered on an Israeli ceasefire in Lebanon that involves Western and Russian cooperation, according to the Post. Dermer secretly visited Russia last week for follow-up discussions, after Russian officials visited Israel on Oct. 27 to discuss the plan.
The proposal calls for Moscow to prevent Hezbollah from resupplying via Syrian land routes.
According to Israeli officials, the plan also includes moving the Hezbollah terrorist group north of the Litani River. The Lebanese military would then take control of the border area for a period of 60 days, overseen by the United States and Britain.
A source close to the Iranian terrorist proxy told the Post that Hezbollah would be willing to withdraw its forces north of the Litani as part of a temporary ceasefire deal.
Hezbollah began launching thousands of rockets, missiles and drones at Israel the day after Hamas launched its Oct. 7, 2023, massacre. More than 60,000 Israeli citizens remain internally displaced from their homes in the north due to the ongoing Hezbollah attacks.
Israel is closer to reaching a deal to stop the fighting with Hezbollah than it has been since the start of the war, but it must retain the freedom to act in Lebanon should any deal be violated, Energy Minister Eli Cohen, a member of Jerusalem’s Security Cabinet, said on Thursday.
“We will be less forgiving than in the past over attempts to create strongholds in territory near Israel,” Cohen told Reuters.
A senior Israeli diplomatic official told Israel Hayom last Saturday that there has been a significant breakthrough in efforts to achieve a diplomatic settlement.
One potential sticking point, however, is the ability of Israeli forces to reenter Lebanese territory if Hezbollah attempts to rearm and reestablish itself.
The official emphasized that the Israel Defense Forces will retain operational freedom to respond to any security threats from across the northern border, regardless of any diplomatic arrangements or paper agreements.
However, the source close to Hezbollah told the Post that the group’s “condition for progress remains clear: Israel must be prohibited from conducting operations within Lebanese territory.”
Following his meetings in Florida with Trump and his son-in-law and former senior adviser Jared Kushner, Dermer headed to Washington to meet on Monday and Tuesday with Biden administration officials, including Amos Hochstein, the president’s special envoy to Lebanon.
Ali Larijani, senior adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said on Friday that Tehran would support a decision by the Lebanese government and the country’s “resistance” to halt the war.
“We are not looking to sabotage anything. We are after a solution to the problems,” Larijani said after meeting with Berri and Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati.
If the ceasefire efforts fail, an Israeli military official told the Post that there are plans in the works to expand ground operations in Lebanon.
